Thursday, December 15, 2005

Was Cleopatra black?

"Watching a local television program recently, I heard Spike Lee express his belief that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt was Black. The African American hostess of the TV show agreed with Mr. Lee saying “Cleopatra certainly looked nothing like Elizabeth Taylor”. But the historical facts contradict Spike Lee’s belief. Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt [for indeed that was who Spike Lee was referring to] was definitely not Black. And since I have dared to follow in the footsteps of that literary genius, Frank Yerby who was known as ‘debunker of historical myth’, I realized that I had to marshal the proofs of Queen Cleopatra’s ancestry that would satisfy any reasonable person that she was a white European".

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Black by birth or not, apparently she lived in Egypt as an adult, and perhaps died in Egypt, therefor it is my position that she consiously and willing as a mature individual choose to be African not European.

Cleopatra was pure Macedonian Greek, and she chose to have her four children - Ptolemy Caesar, Cleopatra Selene, Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphos, by two Roman men, Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius. Her location in Egypt was not a matter of her choosing; she was born a member of the Ptolemaic royal family and eventually became queen. She was intensely connected to her land despite the ethnic differences between herself and her people - she was the only one of her family to learn the Egyptian language and she traveled extensively throughout her domain - but she was not, NOT, black-skinned. There is little chance that she was blonde-haired, or pasty white, but she would have undoubtedly been attentive to keep her skin as fair as possible in accordance with the beauty sense of the day(dark skin was associated with peasants who were forced to work in the sun day after day.) By the way, to whomever said black people come from Africa, etc.; pilots come out of planes, planes come out of the sky, and the sky is blue, therefore, pilots are blue. Your "logic" is just as ridiculous. Please, get your facts straight and don't demonstrate your ignorance like this.

Welcome to the Egyptology News archive

Introduction to Egyptology News

This blog was set up in 2004 to aggregate news about Egyptology and related topics from online sources on a regular basis. It was closed finally in September 2013 due to other commitments. It has been left open as an archive, but comments have been disabled.